The Koreas | Diplomacy | East Asia

Breaking Down the Belarus-North Korea Summit

Lukashenko’s visit reflects a broader evolution in North Korea’s foreign policy, which is slowly expanding in the post-COVID era and is increasingly influenced by ties with the Kremlin.

In this photo supplied by North Korean state media, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un shake hands after signing their Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation in Pyongyang, North Korea, Mar. 26, 2026.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko made his first-ever trip to Pyongyang last week, marking a rare summit for North Korea and upgrading the relationship between the two governments. The summit produced a new “Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation” between Belarus and North Korea as well as around ten other sectoral agreements.

While some observers may dismiss the meeting as little more than a gathering of Kremlin-aligned authoritarian leaders, such a view overlooks both the rarity and the strategic significance of the engagement. In reality, this is the most significant development in bilateral relations that North Korea has pursued in the post-COVID era. The Kim-Lukashenko summit offers important insight into two important dynamics: the deepening influence of the North Korea-Russia relationship in Pyongyang; and second, the emergence of a replicable template for North Korea’s future bilateral relationships. 

The Rarity of Kim Jong Un’s Bilateral Engagements

Summits are relatively routine diplomatic occurrences for many countries throughout the world, but Kim Jong Un has engaged in remarkably few bilateral, head-of-government-level meetings since assuming power in 2011. In fact, Lukashenko is only the fifth world leader that Kim has hosted in Pyongyang during his nearly 15 years as North Korea’s leader, and just the eighth with whom he has had a bilateral meeting anywhere in the world.

This limited diplomatic record underscores the significance of the Belarus summit. Counting only formal bilateral meetings and excluding multilateral sidebars and interactions (such as the massive celebration North Korea hosted for the 80th anniversary of the Workers’ Party of Korea and Kim’s attendance at China’s own 80th anniversary celebrations marking the end of World War II), the full list of Kim’s formal bilateral engagements reveals this highly selective approach, largely concentrated among a small circle of partners:

Against this backdrop, Lukashenko’s inclusion is notable not as an outlier, but as evidence of a deliberate expansion of Pyongyang’s portfolio of diplomatic partners.

The Belarus-North Korea Relationship

Belarus was among the first former Soviet Bloc countries to establish diplomatic ties with Pyongyang, doing so in 1992 just a year after gaining independence. Yet for decades, the relationship remained shallow and undeveloped.

Under Kim Jong Il, Pyongyang showed little interest in cultivating ties with Belarus, particularly after Vladimir Putin downgraded the North Korea-Russia alliance agreement to the Treaty of Friendship, Good Neighborliness, and Cooperation in 2000. It was not until 2015 that meaningful engagement resumed, when then-North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Su Yong traveled to the Belarusian capital to meet his counterpart, Vladimir Makei. The two pledged future economic and political cooperation. In September 2016, North Korea reported that it had opened an embassy in Minsk, which previously hosted only a representative office. 

Still, progress in ties remained incremental until a key inflection point: the September 2023 summit between Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un at Vostochny Cosmodrome. In the years that followed, Belarus-North Korea cooperation accelerated, culminating in last week’s summit.

At the center of the Kim-Lukashenko summit was the newly signed Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation. While neither side has disclosed the full text, the Belarusian presidential office described it as a framework that “clearly and openly sets out the goals and principles of bilateral interaction, and defines the institutional framework for future mutually beneficial processes.” In other words, it institutionalizes mechanisms for engagement and the expected rights, duties, and obligations related to bilateral relations.

To support implementation of this new treaty, officials from the two governments also concluded around 10 bilateral agreements. Described as “sectoral agreements,” they covered functional areas such as agriculture, education, healthcare, and sports. The two governments did not disclose the full range of sectors covered.

The critical question then is if and how security cooperation was covered in their agreements. In particular, does the bilateral treaty contain any sort of alliance-related commitments? Certainly, this was the most important feature of the 2024 Treaty on a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between Russia and North Korea, which has underwritten Korean People’s Army participation in the........

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